CHAPTER XVII.

“Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast,How shall ye flee away and be at rest!The wild-dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,Mankind their country—Israel but the grave!”Byron.

“Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast,

How shall ye flee away and be at rest!

The wild-dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,

Mankind their country—Israel but the grave!”

Byron.

In obedience to the insnaring commands of his unfeeling master, Adonijah stood near the Porta Triumphalis,[15]through which that father and son were to pass on their way to the Capitol, who had subdued the chosen people of the Lord, and led them to their long and woeful dispersion. The procession was headed by a band of chosen musicians, who tuned their instruments and voices to the praise of the victors. Next came the select youths who led the gilded and garlanded victims, and after them appeared the spoils of the vanquished nation and the long file of Hebrew captives splendidly arrayed as if in mockery to their misery. Then the sacred contents enshrined in the holy of holies were openly exposed to the view of the heathen multitude. The seven golden candlesticks, the book of the law, the magnificent vessels given by Solomon, the golden vine, and all the costly offerings that native Jew or foreign proselyte had consecrated to the service of the temple of the Lord. The heart of Adonijah burned with grief and indignation as he witnessed the desecration of these hallowed things; he felt that God had indeed utterly forsaken his people. Art was exhausted to make the spectacle imposing; the pageants represented with cruel fidelity every city, town, or fortress of his unhappy country, with the part they had taken in this disastrous war. The ensigns were adorned with paintings representing the land of Judea before the armies of the Gentile conquerors had defaced the Eden-like prospect, and on the reverse bore the pictured semblance of its present desolation. A horrible fascination riveted the eyes of Adonijah to these affecting images of national woe, but a sensation almost allied to joy thrilled through his frame as he gazed on the ruined towers of Jotapata, and remembered that all his kindred had perished there. They did not swell the train of wretched captives, who clanked their chains after the chariot of the victors; their ashes were mingled with the soil of the holy, the beloved Judea. A fiercer, sterner feeling agitated him as he looked upon the sullen face of Simon Gioras, the monster whose crimes he believed had drawn down the vengeance of Heaven upon Jerusalem, and who basely survived the ruin he had wrought. The assassin showed no generous pride, no constancy, no remorse; he meanly cowered from the doom awaiting him, and surviving the death of honour craved for life. The indignant Hebrew turned away sick with disgust and loathing from the traitor. Unconsciously he joined in the shout the people raised to greet the emperor and his son. The Io Triumphe! burst from his lips; he forgot he was uniting his voice to hail the approach of the conquerors of Judea, for reason was fast forsaking him, and the fire of insanity sparkled in his restless eyes as he turned them on the pageant representing the captivity of the holy city, when they suddenly encountered the glance of a female captive chosen for her surpassing beauty to typify the fallen genius of the land. She was sitting under a palm-tree (the emblematical symbol of Judah) in such an immovable attitude of disconsolate sorrow that the spectators doubted whether the graceful drooping form was a miracle of art, or a living, breathing image of despair. Her dark dishevelled ringlets descended to her feet, partially veiling her downcast face. Her eyes so black, so intensely bright, glanced wildly beneath the long jetty lashes that fringed them, and then expanded fearfully as they met the fixed look of Adonijah, who echoed back her cry of agonized recognition, smiting his breast vehemently, and exclaiming, “Tamar, miserable Tamar! woe is me, for thou hast brought me very low, my sister! Unhappy maid, why didst thou not perish with Jotapata? Oh that thou hadst died when the Roman steel was gleaming over thee! The Gentile chains are round thy hands, my sister. Awake, awake, loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, thou captive daughter of Zion; thou that hast drunk of the cup of trembling, who art drunken with sorrow, but not with wine.”

Tamar answered these unconnected ravings with a look of such intense misery, that it instantly recalled the wandering senses of her wretched brother, and united the severed chain of reason anew. In that single look might be read her whole dreadful story. It told of wrong, of shame, of bitter bondage, of unmerited scorn, of all the woes and outrages lovely helpless woman is doomed to suffer in captivity, but which her chaste lip can never utter.

Adonijah saw it all; he rushed forward, and with desperate strength drove back the thickening crowd, and, leaping on the car, caught her in his arms, exclaiming with a deep and bitter cry, “Tamar, my sister, we will never part!”

The poor broken-hearted captive bowed herself upon her brother’s neck, murmured feebly his name, shrouded her face in his bosom, and died without a sigh or struggle.

The tumult, the roar of the furious multitude, the weapons that glittered round him, were unheard, unseen by Adonijah, who, holding his dead sister in his arms, was pouring over her remains a wailing lamentation in his own language, whose wild pathos, could its meaning have reached their ears, might have softened even the enraged populace then thirsting for his blood.

The cause of the uproar was quickly made known to Vespasian, whose voice interposed between the people and their intended victim. He commanded some soldiers of the Prætorian cohorts to seize the Jew who had interrupted the triumph, and convey him to the Mamertine prison. In a moment Adonijah was overpowered, fettered, and hurried from the scene where the last act of his country’s tragedy was performing, to the depth of that dreadful dungeon.

The procession proceeded forward along the Via Sacra till it reached the Capitol, where, according to the barbarous ancient usage, Simon Gioras, the captive leader of the Jews, was to be put to death. A ferocious joy then sat on every face as the lictors flung the rope round the neck of the guilty wretch and dragged him to the edge of the Tarpæian rock, over which they hurled him trembling and shrinking from the death his crimes deserved. The imprecations the captive Jews heaped upon the mangled victim were mingled with the triumphant yells with which the Romans greeted his fall and stifled his expiring cries. Thus died Simon the Assassin, whose end was as dastardly as his life was cruel.

The day of triumph drew near to its close, but the distant shouts of the mad multitude still at intervals met the throbbing ears of Adonijah as he lay fettered on the flinty floor of the dungeon, listening to every sound with the intense attention of one who expects every instant to receive the sentence of death. Between him and the fathomless gulf of eternity only a brief space apparently intervened. The harrowing excitement that had shaken his reason only a few hours ago subsided into a melancholy consciousness of the reality of those events that had jarred every fibre of his brain. He wished to lift the dim veil that overshadowed his own destiny and that of his outcast people. Where was that mighty arm that had “divided the waves of the Red Sea for His ransomed to pass through,” and then commanded the exulting billows to return to their appointed place, overwhelming the impious Pharaoh and his warlike host? Where was the promised Messiah, where the hope of Israel? Who now should recall the scattered tribes, and bind up the incurable wounds of the daughter of Zion? What hand could heal the broken-hearted captive of Judah, condemned to become a curse to the whole earth?

Then from contemplating his country’s woes his thoughts turned to her—so long numbered in his memory with the dead, so vainly found, only to die within his arms. How sadly seemed her image to rise before his mental vision, not fair and bright as in those happier days when the brother and sister were all the world to each other, when Tamar appeared a creature of happiness and smiles, full of song and sunshine!

Tamar, the dishonoured desolate captive, Tamar become the emblem of her nation’s humiliation and despair—alone met his view. Again he seemed to hear her thrilling cry of recognition; again her dark, troubled eye flashed across his sight; again he felt the last wild throb of her breaking heart beat against his bosom.

The shades of thick coming darkness could not exclude the cruel picture; he closed his burning eye-balls, but still her figure appeared to stand distinct and sad before his shrouded orbs. His spirit sank into the lowest depths of dejection, all the curses of the law seemed poured out upon his head during these lonely hours. “Why hast thou forsaken me?” cried he; “my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Suddenly the remembrance of those denunciations written in the Gospel, which he had trampled upon in his unbelieving indignation, came over his mind with the rapidity of lightning. All had been accomplished, all had been fulfilled. In darkness—fast bound in affliction and iron—a fear that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Christ entered the doubting soul of the Hebrew. He strove to harden his heart against conviction, but still conviction struggled mightily within him—till, exhausted with the mental warfare he sustained, he sank into a deep, death-like sleep, from which he did not awaken till the wandering sunbeams glimmering on his chains recalled him to consciousness and misery.

The morning brought a companion to share in his sorrows—an elderly man of his own tribe, one of the defenders of Jerusalem under Simon Gioras. Every particular of this memorable siege was related by Josadec with terrible minuteness—the divisions among the leaders, the sacrilege, the murder, the cruel famine, and that deed whose matchless horror had made Titus swear “that the sun should never shoot his beams into a city where such a barbarity had been committed.” Adonijah groaned; he writhed in agony, a cold dew bathed his trembling limbs, his hair stood up, but Josadec, like a person rendered insensible to feeling by the dreadful force of habit, continued his revolting relations with an apathy that disgusted his sensitive auditor. The signs and portents of the nation’s fall; the warning voice whose perpetual cry of “Woe, woe!” had never been mute till the Roman missile silenced it for ever; the blazing star hanging over the devoted city in the form of a sword; the mighty sound as of a host rushing forth from the holy of holies with the awful words, “Let us depart;”[16]the temple laid in ashes, the foundations of the city ploughed up by Titus’ orders;—all convinced Adonijah that the Lord Himself had utterly forsaken the Jews. His arm had fought against them, and all the curses written in the book of the law were now fulfilled upon them. Again the awful prophecies concerning Jerusalem came into his mind. Jesus of Nazareth had foretold the coming miseries of Jerusalem.[17]“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Was Adonijah to acknowledge Him as a prophet, or as the promised Messiah, set at nought and rejected by the Jews? He was confounded. Unresolved and terrified, feeling himself exposed to the wrath of God, yet hanging on the very verge of eternity, the Hebrew knew not what to think; he wished to pray, yet like the prophet could only say, “Thou hast covered thyself with a thick cloud so that our prayer cannot pass through.” His companion too derided him. “God has forsaken us for ever; we are now without a priest, and without a king, and without a sacrifice: all prayer is vain, from this second captivity there can be no return.”

Adonijah’s heart was softening from its hardness, and, pierced with a sense of his sins, he poured forth a flood of tears. Josadec, sullen and immovable as marble, turned contemptuously away, nor did he again address himself to his unfortunate companion.

That evening both received their sentence: Josadec was doomed to combat with wild beasts in the arena; Adonijah was condemned to fight with one of his own countrymen in the Circus Maximus. Josadec received the intelligence with sullen apathy; Adonijah, with indignation. Raising his hand towards heaven, he swore by the Almighty name of God to suffer the severest tortures rather than aim a hostile blow at a son of Israel. Dearer than life at that moment seemed the captive children of his people; dearer in their degradation and misery than when he was free and pursuing the flying legions of Cestius Galius, flushed with victory, and believing that he was fighting the battles of the Lord.

[15]See Appendix,Note VIII.

[15]

See Appendix,Note VIII.

[16]See Appendix,Note IX.

[16]

See Appendix,Note IX.

[17]See Appendix,Note X.

[17]

See Appendix,Note X.

CHAPTER XVIII.

“The dying Other from the gloom she drew,Supported on his shorten’d arm he leans,Prone agonizing; with incumbent fate,Heavy declines his head; yet dark beneathThe suffering feature sullen vengeance lowers,Shame, indignation, unaccomplish’d rage,And still the cheated eye expects his fall.”Thomson.

“The dying Other from the gloom she drew,

Supported on his shorten’d arm he leans,

Prone agonizing; with incumbent fate,

Heavy declines his head; yet dark beneath

The suffering feature sullen vengeance lowers,

Shame, indignation, unaccomplish’d rage,

And still the cheated eye expects his fall.”

Thomson.

The fatal morning dawned refulgently over the metropolis of the world, but the eyes of the Hebrew captives shrank from before its beams, loathing the light, and vainly wishing for its decline. A hundred days of festivity had been decreed by the emperor to the Roman people, in which the children of Israel were to be torn in pieces by wild beasts, or compelled to slay each other,[18]to gratify the barbarous tastes of those who held them in chains. Adonijah and his opponent were included in the latter combats, as persons to whom no mercy would be shown. Both were still in the flower of youth, in the glory of their strength, who were thus brought forth to die.

The feelings of a warrior were not so entirely sunk in slavery as to permit Adonijah to assume the sword and buckler without experiencing a momentary elevation of soul. It was not till he found himself within the circle of the vast amphitheatre, and encountered the hostile glances of many thousand eyes, that he remembered that this was no battle-field, but the arena on which he was to be “butchered for a Roman spectacle.” Even in this bitter moment he confronted the spectators with unshrinking firmness, till among that living mass he distinguished the infant Lucius, and felt the tender emotions of his heart towards the child suffuse his eyes.

Titus sat in state to view the spectacle with the lovely Jewish queen by his side. She, endowed with Mariamne’s talents and fatal beauty, yet wanting her nobility of mind and virtue, was become the absolute ruler of him whose mighty arm had enslaved her people,—that people whose miseries were then exhibiting before her eyes. Julius Claudius was seated near the lovers, apparently enjoying familiar converse with them both. His little son, gaily attired as Cupid, listlessly reclined his fair young head against his father’s knee. Art had supplied to his pale cheek the roses that pining for Adonijah had banished, but the glaring hue ill accorded with the fair delicate cheek, whose pallid tints it could not overcome. All this was marked by the Hebrew with painful interest, even in the present awful hour, for the child was the only thing left upon earth that he could love. The craving feeling for sympathy that exists in every human bosom, however cold and unpromising its exterior may be, led him to salute the infant Lucius by name.

The boy raised his languid head and, recognising his unhappy friend, uttered a joyful cry, and, stretching forth his arms towards him, returned his greeting with delight, inviting him to join him by his lively and animated gestures.

Half-unmanned, the gladiator turned away his tearful eyes from the child to his opponent. The face of his countryman was averted from him, and for a moment he expected to behold the familiar features of a friend. They faced each other, and the hostile names of Adonijah and Ithamar were mutually uttered on one side in the tone of defiance, on the other with amazement.

Adonijah indeed, in recognising the war-wasted countenance of Ithamar, scarcely remembered that they had once been foes. Years of bondage and exile had nearly obliterated all traces of former hatred from his breast. No rival, but an old companion in arms appeared to stand before him—one who had fought for the same sacred cause, and was united with him in the same sad brotherhood of sorrow. He lowered the point of his weapon, saying as he did so, “Ithamar, in me you behold no hostile opponent; my hatred has perished with my country: I know no enemies but Romans.” He stretched forth his hand in token of amity, and anxiously awaited the answer of his foe.

Ithamar’s haggard features betrayed surprise, but expressed no generous feeling. Sullenly he repulsed the friendly pledge and assumed a posture of defence.

“Hear me, Ithamar, hear me, my countryman,” continued Adonijah; “I have sworn by the holy name of Jehovah not to raise a hostile weapon against the bosom of an Israelite. I only wait thy bidding to throw away these arms and tread them in the dust. Let an oath of peace be between us; let the unbelieving Gentiles cast us to beasts less savage than themselves, rather than force us to slay each other for their sport. Hearken, my brother, to my words, and hallow with me the commandments of the Lord in the sight of this heathen people.”

Ithamar broke into a laugh so wild and horrid that it sounded rather like the yell of a demon than the expression of mirth. He cast upon his adversary a withering look, and all the hoarded malice of vanished years of rivalry spake in that glance of hatred and disdain. Without waiting for the usual signal, he rushed upon Adonijah, who was wounded before he had time to put himself in a posture of defence.

Enraged at this perfidious conduct, Adonijah forgot his vow, and, animated at once by the desire of revenge and the instinctive feeling of self-preservation, gave blow for blow and wound for wound.

Never were two combatants better matched in size or strength or skill, and the gratified spectators cheered and applauded every stroke, betting largely upon the heads of both, as caprice or interest suggested.

Julius Claudius, aware of the incipient malady lurking in the frame of his slave, ventured great sums upon Ithamar, who he supposed possessed more judgment to direct his courage than Adonijah. In this he was mistaken, for the pressure of calamity, that had overwhelmed the sensitive nature of Adonijah for a time, was far less nearly allied to madness than the fanatic zeal of Ithamar.

Blind with rage, the Sadducee rushed upon his enemy, determined to crush him with one last decisive blow. Adonijah reeled beneath its deadly force, but collecting with a mighty effort his failing powers, plunged his sword into the bosom of Ithamar, who fell dead at his feet, yielding up his breath without a cry or struggle.

A long loud plaudit from sixty thousand spectators greeted the victor, who heeded it not, but bending sadly over his victim remembered his broken vow. A moment he contemplated the sullen features of Ithamar, another instant and the amphitheatre with its circling thousands swam before his sight; the next he slowly sank in that attitude immortalized by sculpture; then his dark locks swept the bloody floor of the arena and rested on the lifeless bosom of his fallen foe.

A second shout, more loud, more lengthened than that which lately hailed his victory, greeted now his fall. It thrilled through every nerve of Adonijah’s frame, and yet he seemed only to hear Julius Claudius’ single voice. He opened his heavy eyes, and turned upon his worthless master a look that told him that his soul was still unsubdued, for feebly raising his hand he appeared to defy him to the last. That indignant gesture exhausted the fallen gladiator’s remaining strength; but the latest sound he heard was the wailing cry of the infant Lucius, then sight and sense forsook him, and he lay unconscious, yet still breathing, before that vast and eager multitude.

The spectators were divided in their feelings; but Titus, who in the intrepid gladiator had recognised the captive of Jotapata, was inclined to grant him mercy. This clement feeling was opposed by Julius Claudius, who declared “that, having disturbed the triumph, he ought to die,” in which opinion he was seconded by all those who had ventured too much upon the vanquished Ithamar.

Berenice espoused the side of the fallen victor, and, incensed at the positive manner in which Julius Claudius dared to oppose her wishes, determined to make him feel her power. She pleaded warmly in behalf of Adonijah, and with Titus she could not plead in vain. He gave the signal of mercy, commanding the attendants of the circus to see the gladiator’s wounds looked to, and to let nothing be wanting to promote his cure.

Not content with having gained her point, the fair Jewess exerted her influence to lessen Julius Claudius in the eyes of her lover, of whose regard she was jealous; and the proud Roman patrician had the mortification of discovering that a word or hint from this fascinating foreigner could shake the affection of his early friend.

Like most other Romans of the period, Julius despised strangers, and this he had suffered Berenice to perceive, and the beautiful Jewess was not of a temper to look over an affront. Unfeminine as she was, this princess possessed the womanly failing at least of seeking to humble those who contemned her power. She exerted her brilliant wit to make the effeminate Roman appear ridiculous, and succeeded so well that Titus, who like the Persian king of old smiled when his fair enslaver smiled, and frowned when she frowned, laughed outright at her sallies. Stung to the quick by this contemptuous treatment, Julius, no longer in the humour to play the courtier, made an unguarded rejoinder which drew tears from the eyes of the royal beauty, and looks of angry displeasure from her princely lover. Julius, deeply wounded, took his little son by the hand, and withdrew from the amphitheatre full of the mortifying reflection that a tear or smile from this highly gifted though guilty foreigner was more to Titus than the intimate companionship of years.

Julius Claudius had displayed the utmost political adroitness during the fearful contests that had made Italy a war-field and a grave. He had shown an acute judgment in abandoning the prince whom fortune was about to desert. He forsook Galba’s adopted son Piso at a critical point of time. With Otho he remained till that emperor left Rome, for he had foreseen that the Prætorian army would not be able to compete with the German legions. The splendid but erratic course of one of his dissipated friends, Antonius Primus, a young Roman knight, whose participation in forging a will had caused his banishment, but to whom Galba gave a legion, had made Julius forsake the failing cause of Vitellius, though he had been one of his chief favourites. He had declared for Vespasian in time to save himself from confiscation, and when Licinius Mucianus, the friend of Titus, took upon himself the direction of public affairs, and Antonius Primus fell into disgrace, he abandoned him, and attached himself to the man who had reaped the blood-stained laurels of the general whose arm had placed Vespasian on the throne of Rome.

From Vespasian himself Julius Claudius had expected no marks of favour, but Titus had received his old friend with open arms; yet his star had declined before that of a woman whose years nearly doubled those of her youthful lover. But the charms of Berenice, like those of Cleopatra, defied the power of time, for her intellectual powers enabled her to retain her beauty beyond the usual period assigned for the possession of a gift so precious, rare, and fleeting. Her fascinating manners veiled her disposition, which once, and once only, had betrayed the softness of the woman and the feelings of a patriot. She had formerly stood a barefooted suppliant for her own people before the tribunal of a merciless Roman procurator,[19]and had pleaded for the Jews, and vainly pleaded, for the man was avaricious, and the tears and abasement of a beautiful woman had offered no counter-charm to the greater influence of gold and the gratification of a barbarous revenge. History has recorded to her honour this solitary instance of compassion shown by the guilty sister of Agrippa.

She had persecuted her sister Drusilla, who was supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world; but, though that unfortunate princess had been forgetful of the obligation of her first marriage vow, her fidelity to Felix, and the self-devotion that induced her to die with him, proved at least that she possessed a depth of tenderness of which Berenice was incapable.

Julius Claudius saw that he had exposed himself to the malice of an artful and revengeful woman, when the irritation of gambling and drunkenness had passed away, and he returned to his house, mortified, disappointed, and miserably anxious. But a heavier trial awaited Julius Claudius than the mere loss of Titus’ favour;—an arrow keener than ridicule or mere worldly disappointment struck him to the very heart. All his affections that were not centered upon self, rested upon his child. The beauty, the talents, the lovely disposition of Lucius had endeared him to the heart of the dissipated parent, who was proud that such a scion should be destined to carry the name of the Claudii down to posterity. Destined to prolong thy name and lineage, Julius Claudius? Oh no! a fairer inheritance is given to the young heir of thy honours, even one “that fadeth not away.” That very night his hopeful young son was smitten with sore disease; in vain art was exhausted to stay its direful progress, in vain Julius promised half his wealth to save his child; now invoking deities whom he had despised, now seeking from the Chaldean sorcerer for some charm to cure a malady that defied the skill of the physician. The child, burning with fever and raving in delirium, turned away from his unhappy father as if he had forgotten him, while he called continually upon the name of Adonijah till his accents grew faint. Fainter and fainter, and yet more laboured, the suffering infant drew his fleeting breath, and Julius had no other child, and he loved the boy so much. He could not stay to see the end; but rushing from the chamber of death went forth he knew not whither—longing to die, but shrinking back in terror from plunging into an unknown futurity.

While the frantic father fled forth into the night, an aged freedwoman, an ancient servant of the house, entered the forsaken chamber, knelt by the couch of the dying boy, and holding his hand in hers, prayed fervently for him.

It was Fulvia the deaconess, who, perceiving that the soul was in the act of departing, took water and administered the rite of baptism to the expiring scion of her patron’s lofty stem. He opened his eyes, seemed to recognise her familiar features, and smiled as he expired.

[18]See Appendix,Note XI.

[18]

See Appendix,Note XI.

[19]Gessius Florus.

[19]

Gessius Florus.

CHAPTER XIX.

——“The dead cannot grieve;Not a sob, not a sigh, meets mine ear,Which compassion itself could relieve;Ah! sweetly they slumber, nor hope, love, or fear;Peace, peace, is the watchword, the only one here.”

——“The dead cannot grieve;

Not a sob, not a sigh, meets mine ear,

Which compassion itself could relieve;

Ah! sweetly they slumber, nor hope, love, or fear;

Peace, peace, is the watchword, the only one here.”

Julius Claudius found himself opposite the sepulchral monument that contained the ashes of his ancient house before he lost the wild impetus that had driven him from his home. He opened the gate which soon was to unclose again to receive the last and dearest of his race. A light gleamed within, but, lost in bitter communion with himself, its presence created no surprise. His pride, his ambition, his glory, must all descend into this abode of death. The deep stillness of the midnight hour calmed for a few brief moments the feelings that urged him to fall upon his sword, and end at once his base career by suicide.

The sight of this last home of the Claudii made him pause in the midst of his dark thoughts to muse upon the nothingness of human things. The dead around him had tasted joy and sorrow, had been legislators, orators, and warriors, though now unconscious dust. The fame of their mighty deeds, and the inscriptions on the funeral urns that contained their ashes, alone revealed that they had once existed. Such as they were must he also become.

These reflections, so new to the man of pleasure, the votary of the world, gave birth to stranger still. As in a glass he saw himself as others saw him, and loathed the faithful picture. His whole life passed in review before him. His early excesses, his companionship with Nero, the murder of his brother, the forced marriage of his sister, the snare he had laid for Adonijah, for the man who had preserved him from the dagger of Tigranes, the death of his own child, of which he considered himself the cause,—all crowded upon his soul with the dreadful force of truth. Tears streamed from his eyes, tears the bitterest that ever wrung the heart of guilt. Suddenly the cries of wild revelry smote upon the ear of the conscience-stricken wretch, who hastily entered the mausoleum to screen himself from the observation of the midnight brawlers.

The sepulchral lamp burned dimly in the abode of death. The feeble ray glimmered upon urns surmounted by the effigies of those whose ashes were mouldering within the narrow receptacle of human passions and human pride, each effigy showing the gradual advance of art, from the rude moulded clay to the chiselled marble that wore the semblance of life.

The only surviving Claudius stood surrounded by the illustrious dead, feeling himself unworthy to be the last of such a mighty line. His crimes seemed to forbid him to approach a spot wherein reposed the relics of the great, the valiant, and the wise.

A strange fascination attracted him to look upon the effigy of his murdered brother, from which he could not withdraw his eyes The skilful graver’s hand had given to the marble the animated expression of life. The martial form of Lucius Claudius rose before the fratricide in the severe beauty of other years, and the guilty one half expected to hear from the half-closed lips of the statue the impetuous oratory that had characterized the noble Roman in life.

The affectation of piety that had led Julius to adorn the tomb of his brother with this master-piece of art, did not compel him to view it when completed. The mortified sculptor received his gold, but not his commendations. In this hour, however, he gained in the thrill of agony that vibrated from the brain of Julius to every nerve and rigid muscle the reward due to the admirable fidelity of genius.

As he gazed upon the image of his brother, guilty years of retrospect rushed upon his memory, till far and vista-like they blended with the happier ones of boyhood, when he was not this blot upon the face of nature, this loathsome compound of luxury and crime. Then he smote upon his breast, and called upon the stately roof to fall and crush him into the atom he wished to be, yet feared he was not. Upon his agony a voice intruded, a voice whose well-remembered tones increased his mental misery almost to madness. He turned round and saw his sister Lucia at his side. From the mild majestic shade he fled affrighted forth, rushing from street to street, still haunted by her voice, her look, her wrongs.

In midnight silence and darkness Julius Claudius pursued his way; he would have given wealth untold at that moment to hear human converse, to see human faces. Suddenly, to his great relief, he encountered on the Julian Way a number of persons, to whom, without being aware of the object for which they were gathering together, he joined himself, reckless of everything but the relief of finding himself among his fellow-men once more. He followed them to the cemetery of Ostorius, entering with them the house of death; whereupon a veiled female, rising from a tripod, admitted him with the rest into a spacious cavity, illuminated by many lamps. Then Julius Claudius comprehended that he was among a midnight assembly of Christians.

The females, closely veiled, ranged themselves on one side of the subterranean temple, the men on the other; but the bewildered intruder shrank behind what appeared to be a tomb, and concealing his features in his mantle remained a silent spectator of the worship of the primitive times.

The Christians’ fervent prayers, their melodious and solemn hymns, at once soothed and awed the soul of the guilty man who had so strangely become a witness of their mysterious rites, and when their bishop rose to address the little flock he was almost “persuaded to become a Christian.”

The venerable countenance of the preacher seemed not unknown to his new auditor; the august tones of his voice awakened some chord in his memory. The place, too, appeared familiar to his eyes. Suddenly the conviction that he was then present with those Christians from whom he had torn his sister, to compel her to become the wife of Nymphidius, passed through his mind with the rapidity of lightning, but he had then entered this oratory by a different route.

He looked about him fearfully, half expecting to see the victim of that ill-starred marriage appear again before his eyes. The eloquence of the preacher at length so completely fixed his attention, that he forgot his supernatural terrors while listening to his oration.

From the tenor of Linus’ discourse it should seem that some young men belonging to his flock had been present at the games of the circus, which the Christians held in deep abhorrence, as may yet be seen in a pathetic passage in the first apology of Justin Martyr. Upon this transgression the second Roman bishop commented with great severity, dwelling upon the sin of murder and its awful consequences in the world to come, with impressive eloquence. “He spake of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come,” till not only his erring brethren trembled, but the fratricide whom accident had brought among his flock.

For the first time in his life Julius Claudius heard the gospel preached fully, faithfully, preached not only as a message of love, but of wrath to the disobedient and impenitent sinner. To the conscience-stricken Roman patrician the word of God was sharper than a two-edged sword, compelling him to disclose every secret of his guilty breast. With a cry that thrilled to every heart he rushed from his hiding-place, and, falling on his knees before the preacher, besought him to save him from “the wrath to come.”

To Him who died, that fallen man might live, Linus directed the despairing criminal at his feet, bidding him “repent and believe in Jesus Christ, whose precious blood would cleanse him from all sin.”

“Can guilt like mine find pardon?” cried Julius Claudius, at once unbosoming himself of the hoarded trespasses of years, pausing at each recital in expectation of hearing the preacher pronounce his case hopeless. The transgressions of this sinner, though black as night, were but of too frequent occurrence in Rome to excite the surprise of the holy man to whose ear they were repeated. Like St. Paul he could have said of many of his flock, “and such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

He comforted the dejected Julius with the hope of mercy, revealing the salvation brought to sinners by the holy Jesus, exhorting him to repent and be baptized, leading henceforth a new life, even the life of faith through Him who loved “us and gave Himself as a ransom for our sins.”

At these consoling words Julius Claudius raised his eyes from the ground, when they suddenly encountered those of his sister Lucia, who was bending over his kneeling form with looks of unutterable love. A second cry broke from his lips; sight and memory failed him, and he sank motionless at the feet of the supposed phantom.

CHAPTER XX.

“But Heaven had gifts for sinful men,I little knew or thought of then;And on my night of fear and sinA ray of peace at last broke in:A blessed, bright, benignant ray,The herald of eternal day.“I’ll bear it to the judgment-seat,And cast it down at Jesus’ feet;It there shall be my only plea,For oh! it tells my Judge that HeUpon the cross vouchsafed to die,To save from hell such fiends as I!”

“But Heaven had gifts for sinful men,

I little knew or thought of then;

And on my night of fear and sin

A ray of peace at last broke in:

A blessed, bright, benignant ray,

The herald of eternal day.

“I’ll bear it to the judgment-seat,

And cast it down at Jesus’ feet;

It there shall be my only plea,

For oh! it tells my Judge that He

Upon the cross vouchsafed to die,

To save from hell such fiends as I!”

Julius Claudius, recovered from the depths of sin and despair, remembered Adonijah, and, quitting the precious remains of his child and the society of his new-found sister, repaired to the place where Adonijah was confined, to make inquiries respecting his state. He learned that the wounds of the victorious gladiator were severe, and that he had neither taken nourishment nor spoken since he had been brought hither from the circus. Julius Claudius heard this account with feelings, oh! how unlike those that had actuated him to clamour for his death in the circus. The comfortless state of the Hebrew was not likely, his repentant master thought, to contribute to his recovery, and he felt that if Adonijah perished, remorse would haunt his bosom to the latest hour of his life.

With this impression on his mind Julius Claudius, forgetting the mortification he had lately experienced through the scornful wit of Berenice, hastened to the house of the all-powerful Licinius Mucianus to entreat his good offices with Titus for the pardon and restoration of Adonijah.

Mucianus, a dissipated man of letters, liked Julius Claudius, and was willing to solicit this boon for him. He was sorry for the bereavement Julius had sustained, and in making his request known to Titus took care to inform him of his disgraced favourite’s irreparable loss. Titus went in person to console Julius Claudius, to whom he spoke with kindness and even affection, and signed the necessary order, which admitted Julius into the Mamertine prison where Adonijah was confined.

The gladiator’s wounds had been dressed and bound up with some skill, but so little after-care had been taken of the despised and expatriated Jew, that he had been left to contend with increasing delirium alone.

Sadly and remorsefully the Roman patrician contemplated the languid form before him: could this feeble frame indeed enshrine the haughty and unsubdued spirit of Adonijah? At this moment the Hebrew opened his heavy eyes, and recognised his master regarding him with a piteous expression that pierced him to the heart. How unlike was this helpless look to that contemptuous one the gladiator had turned upon him as he fell, when his indignant glance flashed back defiance and disdain! His lost child, his lamented Lucius, had loved him too, had died invoking the Hebrew’s name, and the tears of the bereaved parent fell fast upon the burning brow of the slave.

Adonijah perceived his master’s emotion, but could not comprehend the cause of this change of feeling towards him. A sort of stupor came over his senses, and before he recovered from its effects he was on the way to Tivoli in a covered litter, supported in the arms of a confidential slave belonging to Julius’ household.

Leaving the unconscious Adonijah to the tender care of Lucia and her attendants, Julius Claudius remained at Rome to consign the remains of his child to their native dust. No costly funeral rites, no games, no pompous oration, no gathering of the ashes into the sumptuous urn, graced the obsequies of the young Lucius. Pious Christians consecrated with prayer the last sleep of the child, and laid him not with his heathen forefathers to rest, but in the subterranean chambers of the catacombs, as the heir of a better hope, to wait the dawn of everlasting day.

Religion brought balm to the torn heart of the father, who baptized into the faith of Christ resigned himself without another murmur to the Divine will, looking forward with humble confidence to a final reunion with his child in heaven.

Julius Claudius was indeed another man; his habits, thoughts, feelings, all were changed. To deep self-abhorrence and agonizing despair, true penitence, holy hope, and stedfast faith had succeeded. He had become a Christian, to him “old things had passed away and all things had become new.” To the vain deriding world his change of life and creed became a subject of surprise and derision. It was madness, folly, eccentricity; but to his Christian brethren it was a theme of wonder and adoring praise. They viewed him as a brand plucked out of the burning, a sinner redeemed and justified by the blood of the Lamb. To himself Julius Claudius was a greater wonder still, for the deep recesses of that polluted heart had been searched out by the Spirit, its secret iniquities revealed, and the remedy applied by the same Almighty power. To devote his life to make known the great truths of the Gospel to those who like him had sat in darkness and the shadow of death, following the dictates of a sinful and perverted nature, and to show them the new and living way, was suddenly become the end and aim of the young Roman patrician’s being.

CHAPTER XXI.

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